Various products are offered as assortments of similar items. Examples include stationery, greeting cards, and paper plates. In the case of stationery, a container may include three or more styles of paper and envelopes. The container may include a transparent top surface which permits the user to view one or more of the styles contained within the package. Where the size of the container is to be minimized and therefore the stationery is provided in a single stack, a potential purchaser can see only the style of stationery which happens to be on the top of the stack. Accordingly, the packaging may indicate or depict in some fashion the various styles of stationery which are contained within the package. However, a potential purchaser may overlook such labels and mistakenly believe the container includes only a single style of stationery. Where certain styles of stationery are perceived as less desirable by the consumer base, this may impede the sales of certain packages of stationery even though they may contain substantially the same assortment of stationery.
Greeting cards may also be offered in assortment or variety packs. They may be packaged in fashion similar to that described above in connection with stationery. There may be one or more of the assortment of greeting cards which are visible to a potential purchaser. Especially where only a single greeting card is viewable through the product packaging, there may be a tendency for purchasers to ignore any indication on the product packaging that a variety of greeting cards is contained therein.
Recently, paper plates have been offered which bear fanciful images that appeal to children. The images may include animals, cartoon characters, or other proprietary images. The plates may be packages in groups of ten, twelve or more, and each pack may contain multiple instances of the same plate design. A given package typically contains a variable quantity of each plate design and the plates appear in random order. Where the plates are nested in a stack and thus only the top plate is viewable through the associated packaging, purchasers may tend to buy packages preferentially based on the image borne by the top most plate.